Government has changed policy to target Buddhism, observer says

August 12, 1997 - Globe & Mail

China is tightening a noose around the culture of Tibet, attacking the region's religion and its religious leaders, as well as Tibetan intellectuals and scholars.

"I would not call it cultural genocide. It is not that," said Robbie Barnett of the London-based Tibet Information Network.

"But if you look at the situation closely, there are all these little things that show the Chinese have clearly turned their attention to the cultural battlefield. That's where the fight is."

Last month, government-controlled newspapers in Tibet launched personal attacks on a number of prominent researchers into Tibetan history. Even more significantly and in a striking departure from previous pronouncements, the newspapers declared that Buddhism is completely marginal to Tibet's deeply religious culture.

"They called it a foreign import," Mr. Barnett said. "This is really extraordinary. A major cultural attack is definitely taking place."

A month earlier, Tibet's hard-line Communist Party chief Chen Kuiyuan blasted party members who contend that Tibet should be treated differently than other areas of China.

"These members still treat with respect those former customs and traditions of the old Tibet which were a spiritual opium that deceived people and are incompatible with modern times," Mr. Chen said.

"With hostile intent, they emphasize the special nature of Tibet and its unfathomable mystery, still seeking to regard the Dalai [Lama] as a god. This is very sinister."

The cultural changes are not entirely China's manipulations. In part, they result from the same forces of economic globalization that are blurring cultural distinctions around the world.

The gradual loss of currency of the Tibetan language in the region's schools, for instance, may stem more from the economic necessity of fluency in the official Mandarin dialect than purposeful erosion by authorities. High school is taught in Mandarin, while primary classes, taught until now in Tibetan, will soon be bilingual.

An experiment to teach a few high-school classes in Tibetan has been abandoned. And the right to write university entrance exams in Tibetan has also been cut back.

But deliberate policies are also being set by the region's Communist rulers, determined to combat once and for all the influence of Tibetan Buddhism and the sect's main spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

A region-wide campaign has begun, for instance, to "re-educate" monks and nuns. In order to retain monastery membership, monks and nuns must denounce the Dalai Lama. At the same time, "work committees" of Chinese cadres have been established at all major temples.

That has been accompanied by the destruction of 18th-century heritage buildings adjacent to the large square in central Lhasa, where the ancient Jokhang Temple draws huge crowds of devout Buddhist pilgrims every day.

Whether as a result of a deliberate policy or a lack of concern about the fate of the old buildings, very little of the old Tibetan Lhasa remains. According to the Tibet Information Network, 350 of the 600 historic buildings standing when Chinese troops arrived in 1950 have been demolished, including more than 15 in the past two months.

Meanwhile, economic investment continues to pour into Tibet from many Chinese provinces, helping to increase the annual growth rate to more than 10 per cent. The down side to this otherwise welcome activity is that Tibetans have little say over how the money is spent, and urban areas gradually take on the bland appearance of cities in the rest of China.

"Tibetans end up feeling that they are backward, that without Han Chinese [the country's main ethnic group] doing things for them, they would be nowhere," said a Beijing resident who travels regularly to Tibet.

"You see all these old-style propaganda posters, preaching the virtue of modernization. The very clear message is that to be more modern is to be more Chinese."

At the same time, the long-running vilification campaign against the Dalai Lama, exiled spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism, is, if anything, intensifying.

Until last year, pictures of the Dalai Lama were displayed prominently in temples throughout Tibet and even offered for sale in public markets. Then in April, they were banned, sparking numerous fierce protests by Tibetan monks when security forces arrived to confiscate their pictures.

These days, the Dalai Lama can barely move without being castigated by government leaders as a criminal trying to separate Tibet from the "motherland."

In a typical attack, Communist Party regional deputy secretary Guo Jinglong called the Dalai Lama "a sham, a traitor to the motherland, the scum of the people and the chief criminal of religion." China pointedly ignores the Buddhist leader's assertion that he is seeking only more autonomy for Tibet, not outright independence.

In April, Chadrel Rinpoche, the former senior abbot at Tibet's important Tashilunpo monastery, was sentenced to six years in jail for secretly involving the Dalai Lama in the selection of the 11th Panchen Lama, Tibet's second-most important religious figure.

He is believed to be the highest-ranking religious official to be convicted of a political offence in the past 15 years.

In December, Ngawang Choepel, a 30-year-old Tibetan music expert, was sentenced to 18 years in jail after being apprehended while travelling in Tibet on a Fulbright scholarship from the United States. The Chinese accused him of being sent by "the Dalai clique" to spy on Tibet.

The information network's Mr. Barnett said the scholar's punishment was the most severe handed out in a political case in Tibet since 1989.

High-profile figures in the United States, from Senator Patrick Leahy to musician Bonnie Raitt, have launched strong appeals to the Chinese government for his release, without success.

The worry is not that Tibetan culture and Buddhism will suddenly disappear, but that they will become increasingly marginalized into the quaint, "happy-minority" category that characterizes China's treatment of other ethnic groups in the country.

"Religion must adapt to the development needs of socialism and not socialism adapting to the needs of religion," declared an editorial in the state-run Tibet Daily. "We must remain clear-headed on this principle.

"In the basic interests of the Tibetan people, further developments of temples, monks and nuns cannot be without restrictions. Satisfying the basic needs of believers will do."

Mr. Barnett said there has clearly been a policy change toward Tibet.

"The authorities have decided religion is a major problem. They are beginning to target many of the monks and scholars who were educated in the 1980s, when there was a brilliant, stunning revitalization of Tibetan culture. They want to weed these guys out and humiliate them in re-education sessions."

A different view of Tibet, however, emerged from a recent, week-long trip to the region by Canada's ambassador to China, Howard Balloch, and religious consultant Cynthia McLean of Toronto.

"It's not a black-and-white situation," said Ms. McLean, who joined Mr. Balloch on short notice after the Canadian Council of Churches refused a government invitation to send a representative on the visit.

"There is much more fluidity than the reports we get in the Western media about Tibet. I was amazed at the coming and going of all the traders and pilgrims. I was also taken aback by how Tibetan it was."

While Buddhist monks are forced to exist "in a real political situation with real constraints," Ms. McLean said the monks did not seem "demoralized or rigid in their thinking."

At a press conference after his return from Tibet, Mr. Balloch said he made it clear to Tibetan officials "that the Canadian government views the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists and many Canadians are interested in him and his activities."

Nonetheless, Mr. Balloch said he felt there is now "more religious freedom in Tibet than there has been from time to time in the past."

Asked how there could be religious freedom in Tibet when people were unable to worship the Dalai Lama as they wished, Mr. Balloch responded: "I think words like freedom are not absolute."